I started the blog Bureaucracy for Breakfast in 2010, and it was a comedic look at unemployment, the economic divide, and the lifestyles of the 1%. It was featured on Marketplace on NPR, AOL News, Huffington Post, and Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy. I have been interviewed by ABC 20/20 for a segment about the Rich Kids of Instagram, and in addition to writing about Hollywood, celebrity, and excess for Forbes I write about pop culture and entertainment for The Hairpin, Ask Men, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Studio System News. My first book, BROKENOMICS, is coming from Seal Press spring 2015. You can find me on Twitter @TheElf26.

Does Getting Laid Off Make For Compelling Reality TV?

If you’ve lived through a layoff, you know it’s not a very cinematic experience. There’s no rollicking soundtrack playing while you dramatically stride out of the office holding a banker’s box full of family photos and a few office supplies you maybe grabbed in a moment of heated revenge.

When I was laid off from my job as a Creative Executive at a film production company a few years ago, I didn’t escape with a stapler, but a few multicolored Sticky Note pads may or may not have found their way into my bag. They had been “downsizing” different departments on and off for over a year so the layoff wasn’t a total shock, but as most people who have been through the experience know, it’s still always a blow, even if you see it coming. So when I read about a new Fox reality show called Does Someone Have to Go? about dysfunctional companies asking co-workers to decide who should get laid off (rather than the bosses), I was a little intrigued, and extremely insulted. When you’ve lived the experience, it’s tough to flip a switch and think of it as entertainment, unless that entertainment has integrity and involves George Clooney, like the film Up In The Air. This new Fox show doesn’t exactly scream “integrity.”

Fox picked up an earlier incarnation of the show three years ago, and back then it was called Someone’s Gotta Go. Originally, employees at a real-life struggling company would cast their votes for who should get laid off. Mike Darnell, president of Fox’s Alternative Programming, called it “Survivor meets The Office.” Employees got to see each other’s salaries and human resources files, and then divulge with relentless honesty what they thought about the co-workers that they said “good morning” to during countless elevator rides to work. They had the power to send them packing.

The show was shelved (it probably wasn’t as hilarious as The Office or as entertaining as Survivor – what a shock!), but now it’s back with some changes and a new title. This time around, the employees don’t have to vote someone out of their cubicle if they don’t want to, apparently giving human beings a chance to not be cold-hearted, water-cooler sadists if they so choose. This is reality TV though, so I have a hunch that sadism will trump sweetness most of the time. Who wants to watch Snooki making tea and knitting, right? It’s entertainment – people want drunken, ridiculous humiliation. They want drama, and they don’t really care if it hits a little too close to home for hundreds of thousands of people.

Fox and producer Endemol USA (Big Brother, Fear Factor) plan to air the show midseason, according to TV Guide and Deadline Hollywood. Part of me wants to “boycott” DoesSomeone Have To Go? by not watching, as if that’s a radical way to protest the show. Me not watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo obviously isn’t putting a dent in TLC’s profits, so is avoiding this new Fox show really going to do much? When a company starts having layoffs, the office environment can naturally just become sort of toxic. People are paranoid, looking over their shoulder, trying to cling to their jobs. It’s not ideal, but it happens. Do we really need to exploit that dynamic?

Is it healthy to take a very personal, often traumatic situation like a layoff and turn it into “Survivor meets The Office?” Reality TV usually reflects the very worst in people through a mixture of sneaky editing, alcohol (though it’s doubtful they’ll be swigging mojitos in the conference room during this show), and casting. There’s nothing “real” about reality television, and there’s nothing entertaining about watching people getting laid off from their jobs in between commercial breaks. It makes sense that the show was shelved the first time around. The question is, why is it back? I think I’d rather watch Honey Boo Boo.

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I’d watch it. The initial premise of my Forbes blog was the drama of being downsized. I like the idea of a show that combines all the pettiness of the personal with the ruthlessness of the professional.